


pix(i/e)lated

by toro (sapoeysap)



Category: Formula E RPF
Genre: Escapism, Gen, M/M, Mental Anguish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:14:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24421117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapoeysap/pseuds/toro
Summary: if you drop a phone out the window, how many cracks are you able to count in the screen.
Relationships: Daniel Abt & Lucas di Grassi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	pix(i/e)lated

**Author's Note:**

> will stop formatting thoughts into tumblr tags and instead post them on ao3 because that's how the kids deal with pain right by projecting onto thing's that are not theirs to feel. ✌️

Think’s he might throw the phone out the window.

Let it clatter to the ground, see if the case would allow it to survive, or if anything with his name on it is doomed to fall.

It keeps buzzing, filled up with messages and notifications. Constantly hot to touch, processing all the information.

the apologies he doesn’t need to hear, the gratitude’s he doesn’t quite know how yet to deal with.

All to new that this limbo is.

Unsure how he had driven home from the office, all the hugs a distant memory, filming the video a thing that happened. But more an out of body experience.

‘to the ground’, he had said. while they chucked more dirt on to the open grave before even checking to see if he was alive.

Ends it on the high. On the rises. He can’t bemoan anyone. The blame lies with him. It’s not to look like the good guy, he’s beyond that. But it seems wrong to throw a kid under the bus, when he’s just become that ‘kid’ himself.

Seems wrong to try and say anything about Audi other than here are my achievements. Gratuity won’t get him anywhere. He knows that from lesson’s he’s learnt before. Lessons he will learn again.

Until he’s ironed out as a person. Better and stronger, all the way up to what he was before.

The landline rings, which scares the shit out of him.

Probably because for half a second, he had thought it was his own phone, pushing through the silent mode. Forgotten he even owned a landline.

He feels wrung out, tired and heavy in all ways when he picks up the receiver. Arms as lethargic as his brain.

Lucas’ voice down the line feels like a pillow for his head. The tone Dan has heard his team- his friend say so many times to his own kid. That loving, it will be okay, you don’t have to cry anymore. I have you.

Pack’s his bag and makes sure it’s an old one, one he hasn’t used in years. The all have memories of bad hotels by racetracks imbued into them. But it’s not one he’s used for Formula E. It’s unstylish, reeks of the late 2000s in design. Nothing he’d be caught dead with.

First flight out, to Paris from Munich. He has to do a changeover into Nice, then Lucas will pick him up. Drive him back into Monaco.

It’s the worst place really for an escape from the world of racing.

But Lucas offered.

And so here Dan is.

Safe.

In a way.

He text’s Marina his proper location. Wonders if she could do a good reference for him to study at University, get an Economics Degree, be smart like her.

Post’s a picture to his stories, of the airplane. A message of thanks, slotted in between reposts of friends, fans and drivers offering support. Good to project an image, of thanks. Stability, of bouncing back but I am going to get off this world now because it is all I have ever known.

The radio is low as Lucas drives him back the short journey. They don’t really talk, but Lucas rests his hand every once in a while, softly on Dan’s leg. This point of connection.

Bianca pulls him into a soft hug when they make it to the apartment.

Leo crawls around.

They don’t let him feel like he’s intruding.

Bianca just softly hits Lucas when Dan manages to joke, that their relationship is longer and more intwined that Lucas’ marriage. That echo of an Instagram comment left with full love.

She doesn’t leave, more just moves around the house. In and out of their conversation. It’s nice. To suddenly have gone from feeling like the loneliest person on the planet, pushed down into a fall of grace by his own doing. Surrounded for sure, by these messages of love. But they are all digital.

Everything he has ever done to this point. Was the physical on the racetrack, to edit, render, upload, memorialise as these digital hallmarks of his highs and lows.

That’s a good legacy right. Even if the ending is absurd.

Lucas lets Dan lie on his lap, runs fingers delicately through his hair. A point of calming connection.

He tells the ceiling and the underside of Lucas’ chin. That he’s sorry, that he undid all of Lucas’ work in retaining him for the season. Feels the rub of Lucas’ hands down his cheeks, wiping away tears he hadn’t known he had shed.

It’s not an admission that he knew that this was his last season, they had both known that anyway.

But its easy to admit. Makes him lighter in a way, when he confesses, he is not mad or upset with whoever replaces him. Just sorry for Lucas that he has to see a different face across the garage. Laughs as he speaks through the tears that whoever will be his replacement will be undoubtedly uglier than him.

Lucas laughs at that too.

He thinks the tears have stopped. That the feeling of pressure in his throat from crying is dissipating, which is why he confesses. ‘Sorry if what I’ve done looks badly on you’.

Pretty sure, that Lucas calls him ‘idiota’ and then follows that up with a whole host of words that Dan can barely follow.

‘You can see the forest through the trees now’

Dan thinks he can.

Or at least see’s comfort when Lucas lifts him up. Manoeuvres him like they are both not fully grown men, onto his lap.

No weight is lifted when Lucas plants a kiss on his forehead.

Messages on his phone won’t suddenly up and disappear when he checks it again. He knows that, as Lucas plants a kiss on each cheek.

Just, he thinks he might already know how to deal with them.

That this is something not quite ready to be compartmentalised.

That his normal methods of dealing, have been taken away from him.

That a weird process of the world moving on, quickly forgetting about him, about this all, while he’s left to deal with the ramifications for a long time. How horrible this period is going to be. 

Lucas kisses him on the lips, soft, a scraping of two beards. All awkward angle in its unexpectedness.

One day, he will have to resurface. Start climbing back up. Shuffle the plans he had in place for his expected easy retirement at the end of the season. Pushed forward by circumstance.

A hilariously sad note on his Wikipedia page.

At least he has a Wikipedia page to begin with.

Dan bumps his head against Lucas. Soft rest of foreheads to one another. Breathing starting to run in sync. As he calms down from the dark place, he hadn’t even realised he had reached.

Bianca laughs as Leo does something in the background. Sound of her coming over to them, soft weight of the way she sits down next to them on the sofa. Doesn’t say anything, on the way Daniel is perched on her husband’s lap. Bianca just leans in onto them instead. Leo in her lap, loud sound of the toy he’s playing with the only noise.

It’s not were he expected to be, this time last week. No set of circumstances had prepared him for this, except maybe in his own brain. Want’s to peel apart that thought that maybe he knew this would be the consequence, somewhere in layers of You Tube thumbnails and the purple border of Twitch that have been his mind since Racing stopped.

Stand’s by what he said, knows the confession on the sofa they had moved out of the streaming room, to the hallway with the white wall. Was the truest story. Even if its facts get twisted by hungry journalists. He meant every word.

Dan sinks into Lucas’ hold. Lets the world drift by.

He’ll make sure people have to add more to his Wikipedia page again one day.

For now.

He’s a free man.

It’s a scary thought.

He think’s he might be okay though.

**Author's Note:**

> pixilated, is to be whimsical or prankish  
> pixelated, is to do with computer pixels


End file.
